emphasis in embedded text

emphasis in embedded text

[David Zelinsky]

I wanted to have some text emphasized when immediately following a
comma.  I found in the manual the suggestion to use a zero-width space
character.  That works, except that it turns out that by default emacs
actually displays the zero-width space as 1-pixel wide.  That's not
noticeable in a paragraph.  But in an org-mode table, it causes cell
boundaries to be slightly misaligned.  And with more than one of these
in a row, it becomes more than slightly.  That is very annoying.

At first I did not understand what was happening.  But then I found this
post on stackexchange that explains it all very clearly, along with how
to change emacs' default, either globally or just in certain modes:

https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/65108/zero-width-space-shows-as-underscore

Before I found this, I also stumbled on suggestions (apparently
predating adoption of the zero-width space paradigm) to customize
`org-emphasis-regexp-components'.  That actually works very nicely for
my purpose, so I'll probably stick with that.


But the point of this post is to suggest that the org-mode manual ought
to document these things more fully.  The section (12.2 Emphasis and
Monospace) that mentions the zero-width space approach ought to also
mention that by default in emacs these are not actually zero width.
Something like the description in the linked post would be great.

And for `org-emphasis-regexp-components', as far as I can tell this
variable is not mentioned at all anywhere in the manual.  I suspect
maybe this is because it's a kind of kludgy variable and maybe its use
should not be encouraged.  But it could at least be mentioned.  I only
learned of its existence from those older posts I mentioned above.


I don't know if this list is the right place to make such a suggestion.
Should I submit a bug report with some suggested modifications to the
manual?  Or is this all documented somewhere already and I just didn't
find it?


***NOTE***: I gather there's some controversy about the zero-width space
approach, especially in regard to exports.  I very much don't want to
trigger that debate!  I'm merely suggesting the manual say a bit more
about how things currently work, so others won't spend as much time as I
did figuring it out :)


-David

Re: emphasis in embedded text

[Ihor Radchenko]

David Zelinsky <dzpost@dedekind.net> writes:

> I wanted to have some text emphasized when immediately following a
> comma.  I found in the manual the suggestion to use a zero-width space
> character.  That works, except that it turns out that by default emacs
> actually displays the zero-width space as 1-pixel wide.  That's not
> noticeable in a paragraph.  But in an org-mode table, it causes cell
> boundaries to be slightly misaligned.  And with more than one of these
> in a row, it becomes more than slightly.  That is very annoying.

I can see this being very annoying. Another argument to implement proper
pixel-precise table alignment.

Meanwhile, I recommend https://github.com/casouri/valign

> Before I found this, I also stumbled on suggestions (apparently
> predating adoption of the zero-width space paradigm) to customize
> `org-emphasis-regexp-components'.  That actually works very nicely for
> my purpose, so I'll probably stick with that.

Please, don't use it. It is internal variable and changing it will
break things.

> But the point of this post is to suggest that the org-mode manual ought
> to document these things more fully.  The section (12.2 Emphasis and
> Monospace) that mentions the zero-width space approach ought to also
> mention that by default in emacs these are not actually zero width.
> Something like the description in the linked post would be great.

It should not matter ideally. Zero-width space is part of syntax and the
way Emacs displays it usually does not matter. As I said, issues with
non-fixed width symbols in tables should be fixed separately.

> I don't know if this list is the right place to make such a suggestion.
> Should I submit a bug report with some suggested modifications to the
> manual?  Or is this all documented somewhere already and I just didn't
> find it?

This list is the right place for discussions, patches, and bug reports.

> ***NOTE***: I gather there's some controversy about the zero-width space
> approach, especially in regard to exports.  I very much don't want to
> trigger that debate!  I'm merely suggesting the manual say a bit more
> about how things currently work, so others won't spend as much time as I
> did figuring it out :)

+1

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: emphasis in embedded text

[Max Nikulin]

On 25/11/2022 10:56, David Zelinsky wrote:
> I wanted to have some text emphasized when immediately following a
> comma.

In some cases it is possible to use shy hyphen,\-/instead/ of zero width 
space.